


running out of time

by escapismandsharpobjects



Category: Grimm (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Whump, Whumptober 2020, can be read as romantic or platonic i think?, collapsed building, i swear i can write more characters than just nick and hank i Swear, idk i guess maybe like pre-romance or something? maybe?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:33:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26826685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/escapismandsharpobjects/pseuds/escapismandsharpobjects
Summary: whumptober day 4 - prompt: collapsed building. nick and hank are working a case in an old building and well...you can figure out what happens.
Relationships: Nick Burkhardt & Hank Griffin
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	running out of time

**Author's Note:**

> hi what's up!!! welcome to my second grimm whumptober fic (there will be many more coming this month)!! i had a lot of fun writing this fic and i hope you enjoy it!

The building shakes under Hank’s feet, making a slight rumbling noise which tells him that something bad is about to happen.

“You hear that?” he whispers to Nick, who is a few feet ahead of him with a flashlight in his hand, sweeping its beam across the floor.

Nick stops, and focuses his hearing, but of course, the second Hank had called attention to the noise, it had stopped.

“No,” he says, and keeps going. The floor shakes again, and Hank stops moving. No way in hell is he staying in here any longer. He eyes a support beam, half eaten away by some kind of creature. Yeah, he’s definitely getting out of here  _ right now. _

“Nick, I really think we need to go,” he says, not daring to raise his voice, in the unlikely event that a loud noise will hasten the building’s collapse (because that’s what’s going to happen, he’s sure of it). As if to confirm this theory, a piece of wood falls from the ceiling, narrowly missing him. He shouts, and jumps out of the way. 

Nick spins around at the commotion. He opens his mouth to ask a question, but then the rumbling takes over, the building gives a terrible shudder, and everything falls apart.

Hank dives for cover, scarcely having time to shove his body under an old metal worktable before the ceiling comes crashing down atop him. He covers his head with his arms and tries not to breathe in the wood splinters raining down.

Nick is not so lucky. Hank, at least, had had the foresight to figure out what was happening, but Nick had been lost in thought, searching the building for any kind of clue, and hadn’t realized what was going on until it was too late. Something smacks into his chest, sending him stumbling backwards, something else grazes his leg, and then there’s a terrible  _ thump  _ on the back of his head, and the world goes dark.

\--

Hank remains under the table until everything seems to be over. His ears are still ringing and he’s coughing in the dust, but he needs to see if Nick managed to escape the worst of it, too. 

He stands up, surveying the wreckage grimly. Piles of broken wood and severed pipes and various assorted items litter the ground, and it feels like it should be dark, but it had only been noon when they’d arrived, and now that the roof is gone, it’s bright.

He doesn’t see Nick, but then again, there’s rubble covering everything. He could still be sheltering. Or maybe he’s trapped. 

“Nick!”

No response. He shouts again, raising his voice as loud as he can.

Nothing. 

“Shit,” Hank says to himself, and starts walking carefully across the wreckage to the place he’d last seen Nick - just a few steps ahead of him. How could  _ he  _ be perfectly fine (minus a few scrapes and bruises), and Nick be hurt, or even dead? _ He isn’t dead,  _ Hank tells himself firmly, avoiding that line of thinking because it is absolutely  _ not  _ going to help him find Nick. 

He sifts through the rubble for a few minutes, until he sees an arm sticking out, wearing Nick’s jacket, the hand slightly scratched up but looking healthy otherwise. He frantically digs around the arm, until at last, he uncovers the rest of Nick.

The good news is he’s alive. That’s about it. The bad news is everything else.

He’s unconscious, for starters, the cause immediately obvious: a thick length of metal pipe laying next to him, spotted with his blood. There’s no obvious mark from it on his forehead, which means it hit the back or the top of his head, which means he hadn’t seen it coming. He wouldn’t have been able to get out of the way. Hank winces, and continues looking Nick over.

There’s a long scrape down the side of his face from the piece of wood lodged into it. Smaller scratches cover the rest of his exposed skin, from various debris. He’s coated in a layer of dust and assorted small pieces of wood and plastic and metal, and Hank is sure there are more injuries lurking beneath his clothes. He doesn’t see any blood seeping through them, though, and he decides that examining the rest of him can wait - the most important thing right now is to get him awake and get him help.

Hank taps Nick’s face with one hand, grabbing his phone with the other. 

It’s dead. Of course. Hank sighs and puts the phone back into his pocket, reaching into Nick’s pockets instead. He pulls out  _ his  _ phone, unlocks it, and dials 911, explaining the situation as best as he can.

That done, he turns his full attention back to Nick, who still hasn’t woken up. “Nick, wake up.  _ Nick. _ Get up.”

He gives him a slap, a bit harder than he’d really meant to, and that finally does the trick. Nick’s eyes flutter open, and he groans, looking around. 

“What happened?”

“Building collapsed. An ambulance will be here in ten minutes.”

“Mm.” Nick lapses into silence, closing his eyes.

Hank taps his face. Nick’s eyes reluctantly open to meet his. “What?”

“You can’t fall asleep, okay? Not until the ambulance gets here. Just talk to me, okay?”

“Don’t wanna talk,” Nick replies. Everything hurts  _ so much. _ His head is absolutely pounding, and it’s making spots appear and disappear in his vision. Everything is blurry, and Hank’s voice echoes in his ears. He feels sick. But he can’t dwell on that for too long, because his face is burning and he can feel blood dripping down it, hot and sticky and terrible, and something is digging into his back and his left arm feels like it’s been crushed, and so does his chest, and it hurts to breathe, and he’s coated in dust so that when he does breathe, it goes into his lungs, and makes him want to cough, but something in him tells him that coughing would be a  _ really  _ bad idea right now, so he forces the instinct aside. 

All of this is manifested in a single word: “hurts.”

“Is there anywhere it doesn’t hurt?”

Nick thinks for a second. “This hand,” he decides, tapping the fingers of his right hand against the ground.

Hank’s hand finds Nick’s, and holds tightly to it. “That hurt?”

“No.”

“Good.”

Hank doesn’t say anything else, but moves his hand continually, tapping his fingers and squeezing Nick’s hand, to keep him awake. 

Nick uses the silence to think about the only thing he can think about - pain. The pounding in his head is making him nauseous, and the taste of dust coats his tongue. His face is still bleeding and he can feel some of the blood drying and cracking on his skin. Breathing still hurts, and his chest feels worse after talking. He wishes distantly that he didn’t need to breathe. 

And then there is a cracking sound, and Nick hears it this time, and so does Hank, and he flings himself across Nick without thinking. He hears Nick yelp underneath him, and mentally apologizes as he waits for something else to fall. 

Which it does. But not on them. One of the few support beams that had managed to stay standing gives way, in the corner farthest from them. It falls harmlessly to the ground, sending up a plume of dust. 

Hank waits for it to settle, listening intently for any more ominous noises. Unfortunately, he’s so focused on those potential sounds that he doesn’t hear Nick, still underneath him, for a few seconds.

The second Hank had thrown himself atop of Nick, everything in Nick’s world had gone white with pain. He’d made a noise, before he was overtaken nearly completely by the whiteness, but he hadn’t passed out. He couldn’t be so lucky. 

Everything just  _ hurts, _ worse than it did before, and he is being crushed and trapped and Hank is on top of him and not moving and he can’t tell if the ceiling is falling again or if nothing at all is happening but  _ Hank is on top of him _ and  _ he’s not moving. _

Somehow, Nick pushes the blinding pain aside for just a second, long enough to say, “Hank,” and cough on the dust, which, yep, is a really,  _ really  _ bad idea - he  _ really  _ can’t breathe now, and Hank’s weight is still crushing down on him and his lungs are refusing to cooperate and everything is  _ pain, pain, pain. _

Hank shoves himself off of Nick as soon as he hears his friend’s voice and realizes that he’s been crushing him for the past several seconds in anticipation of something else falling down. He lets out a breath of relief when nothing else moves, and glances around briefly to make sure nothing else is  _ going  _ to move, and then looks at Nick.

As soon as Hank’s weight moves off of him, Nick sucks in a deep breath, which hurts, but hurts less than not breathing at all. He looks around for Hank, nearly frantic, needing to make sure he’s still okay.

Hank is looking right back at him, the second Nick’s eyes fall on him. “I’m so sorry, man,” he is saying. “I know that must have hurt, but something else was collapsing. I didn’t want it to hit you.”

“‘S okay,” Nick breathes. “Thanks.” Hank looks okay, but then again, his vision is fuzzy and blurring, so he can’t be sure. “You’re...okay?”

Hank stares, momentarily stunned. “I’m okay,” he says, thinking that that ought to be the least of Nick’s worries right now. “Are you okay?”

He’s not, obviously, but he’s pretty sure he’s not dying, so he says, “yeah,” and then Hank’s hand is back on his, and Hank is saying something like, “not much longer, just hold on,” and Nick thinks maybe he’s crying, or maybe it’s just the dust in his eyes, and everything hurts and he’s not dying but he half wishes he was, and then there is nothing, and the pain stops.

\--

He wakes up and he is moving and he is somewhere else and he doesn’t see Hank and colors are swirling all around him and voices are overlapping and there’s something on him and everything feels fuzzy and he needs Hank but Hank isn’t there, and someone says something to him and he tries to ask them where Hank is but he can’t speak, and then he feels sick and he’s throwing up and that doesn’t feel fuzzy at all, it’s  _ sharp  _ and it  _ hurts  _ and he can barely breathe, again, and then Hank is there, blurry and fuzzy, but  _ there, _ and Nick reaches out a hand and feels Hank take it before everything goes away again.

\--

The next time he wakes up, he’s not moving. The world is a little fuzzy, but it’s not swirling around him, and his head doesn’t feel like it’s about to explode. In fact, he realizes, as he takes stock of the rest of himself, nothing hurts.  _ I must be on drugs, _ he decides, and he wills his eyes to focus.

He’s in the hospital, hence the drugs and the relative lack of pain. He’s sitting up slightly, and he can feel bandages all over his body. There’s a slight pull in his cheek, which tells him it’s been stitched up. Something is wrapped around his ribs, and there’s an IV in his arm and a pulse monitor on his finger and a couple machines next to him - and Hank. Curled up in one of the uncomfortable hospital chairs and sleeping with his neck at an angle that is  _ definitely  _ going to hurt when he wakes up. 

“Hey,” Nick says, deciding it’s best to not let Hank sleep in that position any longer. “You awake?”

Hank looks up, blinking sleepily, until he remembers where he is, and immediately shoots to his feet, bringing a hand to the back of his neck with a wince. 

“Does it hurt?” Nick asks. 

“Feels like I should be asking you that question,” Hank tells him, coming to stand next to him. “You need anything?”

“No,” Nick decides. “And it doesn’t hurt. Nothing hurts. It’s so nice to have nothing that hurts. What kind of drugs did they give me? They’re nice.”

Hank smiles at him. “That’d be morphine,” he says. “I’m glad it’s nice.”

Nick nods. “Like you,” he says. “You’re nice.”

Hank chuckles a little at that. “Maybe,” he decides.

_ “No,” _ Nick says, insistent. “You  _ are. _ You saved me, and all. That’s nice.  _ You’re  _ nice.”

“I guess,” Hank replies, not sure how to feel about this drugged version of Nick. “You sure you don’t want anything? Water, maybe?”

Nick shakes his head. “I want  _ you,” _ he says, clumsily tapping the bed next to him. “Sit.”

Hank sighs and relents, sitting carefully down next to Nick in the hospital bed, which is really too small for this. 

“You don’t have to go to work, do you?” Nick asks, suddenly sounding worried.

“I told the Captain what happened as soon as I could. We both have the week off,” Hank tells him. He’d been surprised by that - he’d figured Renard would give him the rest of the day off, tops. But the Captain had insisted, said it was shaping up to be a slow week. Hank wasn’t sure if he believed that, but he’d elected not to press his luck.

Hank is jolted out of his brief reminiscence by Nick’s head dropping onto his shoulder. He looks at his friend and confirms that he’s fallen asleep. Hank carefully rolls out of the bed, shifting Nick so he’s lying at a more comfortable angle. 

He’s about to return to his chair, or maybe step out and grab a snack, when Nick’s hand flings out and smacks across his torso. Hank grabs it reflexively, slightly startled when Nick’s fingers close around his own with surprising strength, considering his current condition. He gets the message, and reaches out behind him to drag his chair closer. He grabs the magazine he’d been idly flipping through earlier, and opens to the page he’d left off at. 

A few hours pass. Hank has stopped reading the magazine and has switched to a book he’d convinced a nurse to get him from the gift shop. Nick is still sleeping, and the doctor has reassured Hank that he should be okay to leave tomorrow, provided he responds well to the periodic concussion checks throughout the night. Everything is quiet, save for the rhythmic beeping of various machines, and it’s almost peaceful, apart from the whole Nick-being-in-the-hospital thing. But they are both safe, and relatively okay, and their hands haven’t let go.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you thank you thank you for reading!!!! i know the ending was really bad but i can't write endings, sorry. anyway i hope you liked this anyway, please let me know what you think!!!!


End file.
